They smell like plastic, metal, complex hydrocarbons, and death.
Richard Stanley was hired to direct “The Island of Doctor Moreau” but was replaced by John Frankenheimer after a few days of shooting. However, Stanley considered the film to be his baby (he co-wrote the script) and didn’t want to leave. So he disguised himself as one of the mutants and secretly remained on the shoot.
You can watch the documentary about the shooting of this B-movie and it’s full of weird details like that. It’s called “Lost Soul: the doomed journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Doctor Moreau”
People may think he’s crazy, but part of psychedelics is hypersensitivity. I doubt he could actually see in the dark and smell landmines, but his brain probably recognized very small details and fabricated hallucinations based on what little he did pick up on.
I sort of believe the seeing-in-the-dark thing. I was at an LSD party with my friends one night and we took a black frisbee out onto an unlit field (no moon) and threw it around without once dropping it. We just knew where everybody else was and where the disc was at all times. I dunno, maybe we could smell the frisbee.
Was anybody smoking? We always take a drag when we want the disc in the dark, bright cherry gets the toss
Contrast in the dark is far better on psychedelics, I assume because of the massive pupil dilation
No expertise here, but I wonder if neurons are more excitable on LSD. If every cell in your retina and optic nerve is trigger happy, you’d see more in the dark. More noise, too, I suppose.
Maybe the elevated brain energy along with the will to survive or to avoid imminent death might coerce other areas of the brain to align with survival.
Petition for OP to crop the horizontal image from the vertical borders.
I wonder if his memory of ‘seeing in the dark’ stemmed from his pupils being extremely dilated.
To be fair they didn’t specifically say what he saw in the dark.
Night patrol or machine elves. He saw what he saw.
For example, a hypothetical, in low light the LSD has synapses firing so fast that one is very aware of every presence around them. But, everyone is a shadowy monster with glowing eyes. The color of their eye glow indicates their instentaneous level of hostility.
The distortion of perception brings the subconscious to awareness. This is why hallucinogenics can sometimes be therapeutic. But, as the dose increases, so does the effect of the subconscious. Take too much and the perceptions no longer have much basis in reality.
If anyone’s reading this and curious, don’t take LSD. There’s no escape from a bad trip. Try mushrooms instead. I keep a little around for when my head can’t reason out what the fuck my heart and ego are choosing.